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SOME  ATLANTIC  BOOKS 

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THE  ATLANTIC   MONTHLY   PRESS 
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lPATRons  of 
democracy 

Sy  DALLAS  LORE  SHARP 


The 
ATLANTIC  MONTHLY   PRESS 

BOSTON 


Qn^' 


COPYRIGHT,    I919,   BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT.    1920,   BY  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS 


I  HAVE  been  ten  years  writing  this  book,  and 
three  times  ten  years  living  it.  This  is  another 
"Book  of  Acts"  —  rather  than  words;  of  prac- 
tice more  than  preaching;  of  sons  instead  of 
theories.  I  wonder  if  I  am  not  the  only  liv- 
ing educator  with  more  sons  than  theories,  or 
methods,  or  experiments  to  try  out  ? 

Of  course,  each  of  my  children  is  an  experi- 
ment; every  individual  child  is.  But  American 
education  is  not  the  individual  child :  it  is  a  na- 
tional child,  and  that  child  is  no  longer  an  ex- 
periment. Some  things  in  American  education 
are  reasonably  proved  —  enough  such  things  to 
keep  every  public  school  working  to  capacity, 
and  every  American  school-child  busy  at  his 
books  until  he  is  at  least  sixteen.  It  is  time  we 
stopped  experimenting  with  public-school  edu- 
cation. A  few  million  more  experiments  will 
perhaps  do  no  more  harm  than  the  millions  we 
have  already  made;  but  they  hinder  education 
seriously.  It  is  time  the  nation  got  down  to 
business  —  the  business  of  teaching  all  its  people 
to  read,  write,  and  figure,  and  to  get  on  together. 

There  is  something  alarmingly  experimental 
in  the  sound  of  this  last  idea!    The  Three  R's 


may  be  among  the  admittedly  proved  things,  but 
ought  we  not  to  experiment  with  this  "getting- 
on-together"  course?  I  have  been  doing  that 
in  Hingham ;  and  ten  years  of  it  are  enough. 
The  need  to  get  on  together  over  this  whole 
country  is  too  terribly  urgent  for  anything  but 
action.  It  is  this  action,  my  own  doings  with  my 
own  children  in  my  own  town  schools,  that  this 
book  is  about. 

These  last  ten  years  I  have  been,  and  am 
still,  sending  my  children  to  the  Hingham  pub- 
lic schools.  I  am  not  the  only  one  in  Hingham 
who  does  this  thing;  but  I  have  been  among  the 
very  few  to  do  it  who  take  education  seriously, 
and  who  have  the  means  to  send  their  children 
to  private  schools.  Hingham  will  not  trust  its 
own  public  schools  to  teach  the  Three  R's  to  its 
children;  and  as  for  getting  on  together,  Hing- 
ham knows  a  good  many  ways  of  getting  on,  but 
it  does  not  wish  to  learn  the  way  of  getting  on 
together.  Hingham  and  the  rest  of  the  United 
States  are  remarkably  alike. 

One  of  my  dear  Hingham  neighbors  writes: 

"Will  you  forgive  me  when   I  say  that   your 

article  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly^  seems  to  me  mis- 

1  The  following  pages  are  an  expansion  of  that  article, 
which  appeared  in  November,  1919. 

vi 


leading?  You  surely  give  the  impression  that 
your  children  are  the  product  of  public-school 
training.  Is  it  not  true  that  they  are  the  product 
of  the  most  ideal  private-school  training?  Their 
mother  taught  them  until  their  habits  of  study 
were  well  formed,  and  their  brains  well  furnished. 
Then  and  not  until  then  were  they  in  a  condition 
to  be  of  service  in  the  public  schools." 

I  do  not  say  that  my  children  are  the  product 
only  of  the  public  schools.  I  do  say  that  they 
are  not  the  product  of  any  trade,  parochial,  or 
private  school.  They  have  always  been  taught 
by  their  mother,  and  they  have  always  gone  to 
the  public  school,  since  they  could  go  to  school. 
I  believe  in  home  education ;  it  is  the  very  best 
sort  for  individuality,  as  public-school  education 
is  the  very  best  sort  for  democracy.  What  I 
don't  believe  in  is  private  and  parochial  and 
trade-school  education,  for  its  end  is  not  democ- 
racy. Nor  am  I  exhibiting  my  children  as  schol- 
ars —  not  with  their  inheritance !  The  Lord  and 
their  mother  have  worked  together  over  them 
until  now,  their  mother  with  more  patience  and 
push  than  the  Lord  —  but  they  simply  are  not 
of  exhibition  stock,  educationally.  I  think  they 
are  bound  to  be  intelligent  democratic  citizens, 
a  sort  of  citizen  so  necessary  to  this  country  that 


even  scholars  should  be  sacrificed  to  make  them! 
I  have  not  been  misleading  in  my  essay.  I 
shall  be  misleading  here,  however,  if  I  quote 
only  my  neighbor's  letter  and  do  not  go  on  to  tell 
of  the  far-flung  response  that  came  back  to  me 
from  across  the  country  to  this  plea  for  a  com- 
mon school.  It  has  been  little  short  of  a  national 
wave  of  approval.  The  private-school  people 
have  not  said  very  much:  one  woman  principal 
told  me  she  was  glad  to  know  that  there  was  still 
a  dreamer  and  fool  left  alive  in  the  world ;  but  the 
common  people  read  it  gladly,  as  I  hoped  they 
would;  the  Master-Builders'  Association  of  Bos- 
ton saying:  "We  believe  you  have  uncovered 
something  greater  than  you  know,  and  we  wish 
to  get  behind  you."  From  New  York,  Chicago, 
and  Pasadena  have  come  personal  letters  of  the 
same  tenor,  together  with  orders  for  the  maga- 
zine to  be  distributed  broadcast. 

Indeed,  there  is  a  stack  of  letters  on  my  desk 
which  I  should  like  to  print  as  a  book,  for  their 
straight  Americanism,  their  genuine  democracy, 
and  their  unshakable  faith  in  a  common  public 
school  for  all  the  people  as  the  very  bed-rock  of 
a  real  democracy. 

Dallas  Lore  Sharp. 
December  25,  19 19. 


PATRONS   OF 
DEMOCRACY 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

Education  is  the  most  sacred  concern,  indeed  the  only 
hope,  of  a  nation.  —  John  Galsworthy. 

I 

The  average  physical  age  of  man  is  thirty- 
three;  his  average  educational  age  is  eight- 
een, or  thereabouts.  A  few  men  go  on  to 
school  after  eighteen,  but  they  learn  noth- 
ing fundamental,  for  theories,  methods,  and 
facts  are  not  fundamental:  they  belong  to 
the  useful,  the  professional.  Here  and  there 
is  a  student  perennially  eighteen  years  old 
in  mind,  who  unlearns  a  few  important 
things  in  and  after  college;  but  most  fresh- 
men are  what  they  are,  and  after  three  years 
in  college  they  are  seniors.  They  come  to 
college  with  all  their  educational  clothes  on, 
asking  the  faculty  if  it  will  please  help  but- 
ton them  up.  College  gives  a  little  better 
fit  to  the  educational  garment.  We  live  on 
and  learn,  but  the  lessons  from  seventeen  to 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

seventy  arc  only  a  review  and  an  application 
of  those  we  learned  from  six  to  sixteen. 

In  any  national  survey  of  education,  there- 
fore, the  higher  schools  and  colleges  are  neg- 
ligible. Our  education  as  a  people  is  that  of 
the  secondary  schools.  In  them,  more  than 
in  any  other  American  institution  —  more 
than  in  all  other  American  institutions  — 
are  the  issues  of  an  enlightened  national 
life;  issues  no  longer  national  merely,  for  the 
war  has  made  them  vital  to  the  life  of  the 
world.  American  democracy  is  now  a  world- 
issue.  Already  from  overseas  the  peoples  are 
coming  to  study  our  institution  of  democ- 
racy; the  Japanese,  with  keen,  characteristic 
insight,  singling  out  the  public  schools  —  as 
if  in  them  were  the  source  and  the  secret  of 
democracy. 

Certainly  no  democracy  can  be  better 
than  its  educational  system;  for  democracy, 
more  than  any  other  political  programme,  is 
a  programme  of  education.  The  spirit  of 
democracy  is  the  fruit  of  education,  and 
never  an  inheritance,  unless  an  education 
can  be  inherited,  devised  by  will,  and  blessed 

2 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

upon  a  child  by  laying-on  of  hands.  You 
can  come  by  the  spirit  of  aristocracy  that 
way,  for  the  God-I-thank-thee-that-I-am- 
not-as-other-men  spirit  is  a  negation  and  an 
assumption.  One  may  even  assume  that  he 
is  a  Kaiser  and  a  vice-gerent  of  God.  We 
cannot  assume  vice-gerentcies  and  the  like 
in  America,  so  we  stop  modestly  with  what- 
ever else  there  is  to  assume.  We  all  alike 
inherit  the  Constitution;  and  it  doth  not 
appear  at  birth  what  we  shall  be,  a  Presi- 
dent in  Washington,  or  a  Washington  corres- 
pondent, or  both;  for  every  child,  although 
born  a  presidential  candidate,  cannot  com- 
mit his  nomination  and  election  to  the  hands 
of  the  priest  who  christens  him,  as  he  can 
his  social  position;  he  must  leave  it  all  to 
the  large,  firm  hands  of  the  future. 

How  many  American  parents  hate  this 
divine  hazard  of  democracy !  "I  will  take  no 
chance  with  my  boy!"  a  mother  said  to  me 
recently,  who  had  come  from  New  Jersey  to 
Boston  with  her  young  son;  as  if  the  demo- 
cratic hazards  for  her  boy  might  be  fewer  in 
Boston ;  and  as  if  money  and  birth  and  breed- 
3 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

ing  brought  to  Boston  might  overcome  the 
handicap  of  equality  conferred  by  the  Con- 
stitution upon  her  son.  Why  is  she  afraid? 
Because  I  have  boys  in  Hingham?  Mine 
are  not  the  only  boys  in  Hingham,  as  they 
have  already  found  out,  and  as  her  boy  will 
soon  find  out.  Every  boy  in  Hingham  is  a 
challenge  to  my  bo}^;  so  is  every  boy  in  Bos- 
ton, and  in  Baton  Rouge,  and  in  Bagdad.  It 
is  the  girls  in  Hingham  that  I  am  afraid  of. 

Money  and  birth  and  breeding  count  in  a 
democracy  —  for  and  against  a  man ;  edu- 
cation and  purpose,  however,  count  a  great 
deal  more  and  altogether  for  a  man.  But 
count  how?  What  is  the  true  end  of  Amer- 
ican education?  "Is  it  life  or  a  living?" 
It  is  neither  life  nor  a  living.  We  can  live 
and  get  a  living  without  an  education,  as  we 
can  marry  and  give  in  marriage.  But  we 
cannot  make  the  United  States  a  democracy 
without  education.  The  true  end  of  Amer- 
ican education  is  the  knowledge  and  practice 
of  democracy  —  whatever  other  personal 
ends  an  education  may  serve.  Education 
has  turned  a  corner  since  we  went  to  school, 
4 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

and  finds  itself  face  to  face  with  a  bigger 
thing  than  life  or  the  getting  of  a  living.  It 
is  face  to  face  with  a  big  enough  thing  to  die 
for  in  France,  a  big  enough  thing  to  go  to 
school  for  in  America  —  going  to  school,  on 
the  whole,  being  more  difficult  than  dying. 
Life  and  the  getting  of  a  living  may  have 
been  the  proper  ends  of  our  private  educa- 
tion heretofore;  such  ends  are  no  longer 
legitimate.  Neither  life  nor  the  getting  of  a 
living,  but  living  together  —  this  must  be  the 
single  public  end  of  a  common  public  educa- 
tion hereafter. 

This  new  and  larger  end  demands  a  new 
and  larger  thought  of  education.  The  day 
of  the  little  red  schoolhouse,  and  all  other 
little  things  in  American  education,  must 
pass.  The  large  schoolhouse  must  come. 
Our  present  school  concepts  are  as  inade- 
quate as  are  our  present  school  appropria- 
tions and  programmes.  We  must  reconceive 
the  nation's  educational  needs;  we  must  do 
it  as  vigorously,  as  generously,  and  as  uni- 
versally as  we  lately  conceived  her  military 
needs;  and  we  must  create  an  educational 
5 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

machinery  as  effective  as  the  military  ma- 
chinery to  meet  the  needs. 

But  what  a  machinery  is  the  little  red 
schooihouse,  and  the  little  three-hundred- 
dollar  schoolteacher,  and  the  little  thirty- 
cent  interest  of  the  average  citizen  in  his 
public  school!  Can  the  Japanese  be  right  in 
thinking  the  intelligence  and  spirit  of  Amer- 
ica a  product  of  American  schools?  They 
have  long  watched  this  democracy,  and  at 
last,  having  seen  its  temper  tried  by  war, 
they  have  come  to  study  into  the  secret  of 
its  magnificent  behavior  —  as  if  it  were  an 
educational  secret,  and  might  be  found  in 
our  public  schools.  They  are  right,  but  they 
are  going  to  be  terribly  shocked,  and  shaken 
in  their  faith. 

II 

What  do  the  Japanese  expect  to  find? 
Surely  nothing  less  than  this  whole  nation  in 
school  —  for  we  are  a  literate  people ;  and 
nothing  less  than  the  whole  nation  in  school 
together,  one  common  school  —  for  we  are 
without  caste  as  a  people;  and  nothing  less 
6 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

than  the  whole  nation  together  in  a  com- 
mon school  until  it  gets  the  conception  of 
democracy,  the  abstract,  spiritual  meaning  of 
democracy  —  for  democracy  is  a  spirit,  and 
they  who  know  the  truth  of  democracy  know 
it  in  spirit. 

What  the  Japanese  will  actually  find  is  a 
democracy  divided  educationally  against  it- 
self; wrong  in  its  aim;  weak  in  its  purpose; 
feeble  in  its  support;  faltering  in  its  faith; 
and  not  only  divided,  but  hostile,  in  its 
educational  plans.  It  is  bad  enough  that 
eighteen  per  cent  of  our  children  do  not 
attend  school  at  all;  it  is  not  so  bad  for 
democracy,  however,  as  that  our  other 
eighty-two  per  cent  should  be  divided  in 
their  education  by  private,  parochial,  indus- 
trial, and  the  regular  public  schools,  until 
we  can  be  said  to  have  no  common  educa- 
tional programme,  no  common  educational 
purpose,  no  common  educational  ideal  — 
no  common  school.  Yet  what  else  but  a  com- 
mon school  can  be  the  head  of  the  corner  of 
democracy?  We  must  go  to  school;  we  must 
all  go  to  school;  we  must  all  go  together  to 
7 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

school,  with  a  common  language,  a  common 
course  of  study,  a  common  purpose*  faith, 
and  enthusiasm  for  democracy.  American- 
ization is  not  this  new  educational  ideal. 
The  world  is  not  to  be  Americanized.  A 
few  millions  of  foreigners  in  America  need 
to  be  Americanized;  but  all  the  millions  of 
Americans  in  America  need  to  be  democ- 
ratized. Nothing  less  than  the  democratiza- 
tion of  America  dare  be  our  educational 
aim, 

I  have  not  worked  out  the  new  course  of 
study.  This  book  is  a  plea,  not  a  pro- 
gramme. One  thing  I  know:  we  must  have 
a  common  school  for  all  the  people;  and  all 
the  people  must  attend  a  common  school 
until  every  American  child  has  a  high-school 
education.  It  is  not  a  dream;  it  is  not  im- 
possible —  unless  democracy  is  a  dream  and 
impossible. 

The  present  standard  of  American  educa- 
tion is  a  fourth-grade  standard  —  and  less! 
The  educational  statistician  at  Washington 
says,  "it  is  found  that  6.36  per  cent  of  the 
children  in  the  elementary  schools  are  in  the 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

eighth  grade."  This  is  not  making  America 
safe  for  democracy.  On  through  the  fourth 
grade  to  the  end  of  the  eighth  grade,  on 
from  the  eighth  grade  to  the  end  of  the 
high  school,  we  must  push  the  education 
of  the  whole  people  before  we  can  trust  the 
people  with  democracy. 

There  will  still  be  great  need  of  special 
schools  —  for  the  subnormal:  private  schools 
for  the  feeble-minded;  vocational  schools 
for  the  slow  and  the  stubborn;  but  for  the 
normal,  one  common  school  only,  for  rich 
and  poor,  up  to  the  end  of  the  high  school; 
by  which  time  we  are  pretty  nearly  all  that 
we  need  to  be  for  purposes  of  democracy. 

Is  this  a  new  educational  language?  It  is 
no  newer  than  the  new  demands,  no  more 
foolish  than  genuine  democracy.  The  old 
order  has  changed,  and  has  given  place  to 
so  large  an  educational  need  that  we  have 
neither  the  mind  nor  the  machinery  for  it. 
Take  the  country  clear  across,  and  our  edu- 
cational mind  and  machinery  are  little  bet- 
ter than  a  reproach.  And  our  machinery 
for  education  is  better  than  our  mind  for  it. 
9 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

We  have  better  buildings,  better  teachers, 
better  salaries  —  even  better  salaries  —  than 
public  sympathy  and  support.  Poorer  than 
the  poorest  piece  of  kit  in  all  our  educa- 
tional outfit  is  the  individual  American's 
support  of  his  public  school. 

In  this  new  and  larger  education  there 
will  be  great  elasticity,  providing  for  the  spe- 
cial case,  the  educational  machine  having 
a  transmission  with  plenty  of  speeds  ahead, 
and  even  a  reverse  gear  for  those  who  are 
backward.  But  a  larger,  simpler,  speedier 
education  is  to  be  provided,  that  shall  re- 
duce the  number  of  school  years,  and  thus 
lessen  the  number  of  special  cases;  that  shall 
reduce  the  number  of  narrow  school  courses 
—  commercial,  general  business,  college,  and 
vocational  —  to  one  common  course,  one 
broad,  universal  course,  thus  educating  for 
democracy  first,  and  after  that  for  life  and  a 
living  —  and  even  for  entrance  into  college. 
Entrance  into  college!  O  Lord,  how  long 
shall  American  public-school  education  suf- 
fer this  incubus  of  the  college? 

A  course  of  study  that  fits  a  student  for 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

citizenship  should  fit  him  for  college,  the 
college  course  leading  only  to  a  larger  reali- 
zation of  citizenship,  a  deeper  spiritual,  a 
broader  intellectual  preparation  for  its  priv- 
ileges and  duties.  College-going  students 
and  other  students  in  high  school  do  not  dif- 
fer in  kind  or  in  need,  and  up  to  the  college 
doors  should  have  no  different  training;  the 
true  test  for  college  being  a  moral-spiritual- 
intellectual  test,  and  no  such  futile  thing  as  a 
different  course  of  study.  Let  all  be  called 
to  college,  and  as  many  as  possible  be  chosen 
—  the  eager  in  spirit,  the  morally  strong,  the 
intellectually  capable.  We  must  do  away 
with  our  present  false  "requirements,"  that 
can  be  "crammed"  for,  that  "prep"  schools 
can  fit  the  totally  unfit  for,  as  if  getting  into 
college  were  a  more  than  normal  feat,  a 
peculiar,  highly  specialized,  calculating  pro- 
cess that  one  must  be  fed-up  for,  trained 
down  for,  as  a  runner  is  trained  for  the  hun- 
dred-yard dash,  rubbed  down,  and  coached  to 
the  very  tape.  To-day  in  the  Boston  "Her- 
ald" appeared  this  strange  piece  of  educa- 
tional news :  — 

II 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

IIOTCHKISS  SCHOOL  WINS  *.B.K. 
TROPHY 

Connecticut  Institution  Boys  Pass  Best 
Harvard  Entrance  Exams. 

The  intcrscholaetic  scholarship  trophy,  annually 
awarded  by  the  Harvard  chapter  of  the  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  to  the  school  whose  candidates  make  the 
best  record  at  the  admission  examination,  has  been 
won  for  the  year  1919  by  the  Hotchkiss  school  at 
Lakeville,  Ct.,  at  which  the  Rev.  H.  G.  Buehler  is 
headmaster. 

Heretofore,  the  trophy  has  been  awarded  to  the 
school  havinn  the  greatest  number  of  candidates  on 
the  honor  list,  bat,  in  accordance  with  the  vote  of 
the  chapter  taken  last  year,  the  award  has  now 
been  made  to  the  school  whose  candidates  attained 
the  highest  average  grade,  this  grade  being  calcu- 
lated on  the  total  records  of  all  final  candidates  from 
the  school  competing  as  a  group  with  all  final 
candidates  from  other  schools. 

This  is  the  school  of  whose  teachers  Clyde  L. 
Davis,  in  the  Atlantic  for  November,  1919, 
writes :  — 

The  masters  were  simply  drill  sergeants. 
"You'd  better  remember  that  word,  boys:  you  '11 
need  it  in  June,"  was  the  oft-repeated  remark 
of  the  indefatigable  old  German  instructor;  and 
it  defined  the  pedagogical  horizon  of  the  whole 
staff.  Their  jobs  depended  on  making  their 
classes  pass  the  college  entrance  examinations 
at  the  end  of  the  year;  and  their  everlasting, 
driving,  barren,  humdrum  tutoring  on  the  rudi- 
ments of  languages  and  mathematics  was  any- 
thing but  inspiring. 

That  is  the  prize-taking   "preparation" 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

for  college !  Phi  Beta  Kappa  and  the  college 
faculties  encourage  this  as  ideal !  And  here 
is  a  description  of  these  ideally  "prepared," 
prize-taking  students  of  this  very  school, 
by  Mr.  Davis  who,  as  a  scholarship  man, 
was  himself  "prepared"  among  them:  — 

The  ignorance  of  these  boys  amazed  me. 
They  knew  nothing  of  United  States  history,  and 
not  enough  geography  to  locate  my  native  state 
with  exactitude.  They  had  traveled  abroad, 
but  having  taken  nothing  with  them,  they  had 
brought  nothing  back.  They  wrote  illegible 
scrawls.  Standard  literature  was  positively  a 
sealed  book  to  them ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  they 
had  been  tutored  toward  college  entrance  exami- 
nations from  childhood.  The  rudiments  of  Latin 
and  algebra  had  been  drummed  into  them,  and 
not  a  few  spoke  French.  For  me,  a  mature  farm- 
product,  to  compete  with  these  fellows  in  learn- 
ing languages  was  an  impossible  task.  There- 
fore my  final  humiliation  was  to  see  myself 
easily  beaten  in  the  classroom. * 

1  It  is  only  fair  to  add  that  Mr.  Davis  wrote  also:  "  But 
working,  playing,  and  cheering  for  the  school  finally  made 
me  love  it  completely."  Hotchkiss  School,  it  is  needless  to 
say,  and  Milton  Academy,  a  little  later  on,  are  not  men- 
tioned as  "sinners  above  all  the  Galilaeans,"  but  merely  as 
typical  private  schools. 

13 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

These  are  the  prize-takers  at  the  begin- 
ning of  their  college  course !  This  is  the  great 
work  of  the  private  "prep"  school.  This  is 
education  according  to  the  colleges,  and  im- 
posed by  them  upon  the  public  schools! 

O  Lord,  I  say,  how  long  will  the  sensible 
supporting  public  tolerate  this  burden  that 
the  Pharisees  lay  upon  the  back  of  the  pub- 
lic school?  Right  here  must  begin  the  re- 
form in  our  public-school  education,  the 
public,  not  the  colleges,  determining  what 
the  programme  shall  be,  and  doing  away 
utterly  with  this  cramming,  coaching  prepa- 
ratory course,  wherever  that  course  fails  to 
meet  the  general  need. 

Any  special  programme  of  training,  voca- 
tional, business,  or  college,  before  the  end 
of  the  high  school,  if  not  contrary  to  the 
Decalogue,  is  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the 
Constitution,  and  a  menace  to  democracy. 
Moreover,  it  is  German,  no  matter  how  we 
try  to  clothe  it.  Such  special  training  was 
in  Germany,  and  is  here,  a  deliberate  at- 
tempt to  industrialize  education,  to  make  it 
economically  efificient,  to  create  a  working 
14 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

class  or  professional  class.  So-called  voca- 
tional education  before  the  end  of  a  general 
high-school  course  is  education  backward,  the 
training  of  a  man  into  a  machine,  a  soul  into 
a  pair  of  hands.  It  is  education  for  autoc- 
racy —  the  German  system,  which,  in  its 
"People's  Schools,"  carried  ninety  per  cent 
of  German  children  up  to  our  eighth  grade, 
then  blocked  all  further  education,  except 
in  trade  and  continuation  schools.  These  are 
the  "masses,"  and  not  an  average  of  one  in 
ten  thousand  got  through  these  "Peoples' 
Schools"  into  the  gymnasium,  or  high  school, 
with  the  other  ten  per  cent  —  the  children 
of  the  "classes." 

Masses  and  classes  until  recently  in 
American  education  have  been  one,  the 
school  doors  opening  alike  to  all;  but  now, 
under  the  guise  of  "education  for  a  living," 
or  in  some  other  robe  of  light,  the  devil  of 
vocational  training  goes  up  and  down  the 
land,  installing  machinery  in  the  high-school 
basements,  to  steal  away  the  quiet  of  the 
study  room;  and,  holding  out  "Big  Money" 
in  one  hand,  and  a  desiccated  textbook  in  the 
15 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

other,  says  to  the  restless  high-school  boys, 
"Choose!" 

American  education  is  going  vocationally 
mad,  going  bad;  for  behind  this  mischievous 
propaganda  is  a  purpose  and  a  philosophy 
not  had  of  democracy.  Let  me  quote  a  pas- 
sage from  a  textbook  by  a  native  American 
high-school  teacher:  — 

In  our  country,  where  every  youth  in  his  first 
year  in  school  learns  that  he  may  be  president 
some  day;  where  parents  permit  their  children 
to  look  down  upon  their  modest  callings;  where 
the  higher  professions  are  overcrowded,  manual 
labor  despised,  the  farms  deserted,  we  often  find 
in  the  serving  class  a  weak,  discontented  class  of 
people.  In  sharp  contrast  to  them  were  the 
people  who  served  us  in  Germany.  They  knew 
what  they  had  to  do  and  did  it,  without  feeling 
that  it  injured  their  dignity. 

They,  the  servant  class  of  Germany,  had 
been  educated  to  servitude,  he  means;  where- 
as, in  this  country,  as  he  goes  on  to  say,  "A 
'bum'  wanted  a  dollar  for  carrying  three 
small  hand-bags  for  us  to  the  station";  all 
because  of  this  idiotic  American  teaching 
&bout  some  day  being  president! 
i6 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

That  "bum"  had  had  no  presidential 
teaching.  He  might  have  had  the  "busi- 
ness course"  in  school,  perhaps;  for,  instead 
of  a  promise  of  the  presidency,  our  schools 
nowadays  hold  out  the  necessity  of  making 
money,  making  it  quick,  and  a  lot  of  it. 
"Double  your  salary"  is  our  educational 
slogan  —  salary,  not  wages.  The  next  revi- 
sion of  the  Bible  will  doubtless  read:  "The 
salary  of  sin  is  death."  The  word,  with  all 
its  pretensions,  has  no  place  in  our  democra- 
tic dictionary.  Vocational  training  can  never 
result  here  in  either  the  servitude  or  the 
servility  of  Germany.  The  American  mind 
reacts  in  an  American  way  —  turns  hostile, 
instead  of  servile;  mobilizes  into  camps, 
instead  of  castes;  and  goes  forth  to  fight, 
chanting  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
European  education,  as  James  Bryce  says, 
has  taught  men  either  to  look  up  or  to  look 
down.  In  America  we  look  at  each  other  on 
the  level,  square  in  the  eye;  and  it  is  the 
business  of  our  education  to  make  that  look 
friendly  with  perfect  understanding. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  we  are  not 
n 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

educating  enough  workers,  laborers,  I  mean, 
who  work  with  their  hands;  nor  shall  we  till 
we  educate  everybody  to  work  with  his 
hands,  to  produce  something,  something 
elemental,  essential  for  human  existence. 
Who  does  not  do  some  creative  work  with 
brain  or  hands  lives  a  mendicant,  dies  a 
pauper,  and  liei:  buried  in  the  potter's  field, 
no  matter  what  mausoleum  marks  his 
tomb.  We  should  be  educated  to  the  biol- 
ogy, the  philosophy  —  the  democracy  —  of 
labor,  and  should  actually  be  taught  a  trade, 
all  of  us ;  and  every  manager  and  professional 
man  might  well  return  once  in  seven  years 
for  a  sabbatical  year  at  that  trade.  But 
such  training  is  not  the  business  of  the 
public  schools. 

I  count  myself  a  laboring  man.  I  believe 
in  labor  and  laborers.  There  must  be  a 
laboring  class,  educated  as  a  class,  and  we 
must  all  belong.  I  have  always  worked  with 
my  hands,  and  the  best  I  could  with  my 
head,  too.  A  college  class  is  not  a  garden  of 
cabbages;  not  exactly.  Work?  God  works. 
We  all  work,  or  ought  to.  Christ  had  his  kit 
i8 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

of  tools.  It  is  not  work  that  divides  masses 
from  classes,  and  sets  worker  against  em- 
ployer, nor  is  it  money;  it  is  lack  of  under- 
standing. 

"Capital  and  Labor  must  get  together," 
is  the  slow  and  still  half-sincere  cry  of  Capi- 
tal. That  belief  was  not  in  Capital's  educa- 
tion, nor  in  Labor's  either;  and  both  are 
asking,  "How?  How  can  a  man  be  born 
when  he  is  old?  How  can  Capital  and  Labor, 
which  are  now  separated,  get  together?" 
But  they  must!  Then  they  must  begin  to- 
gether, and  stay  together,  not  as  Capital  and 
Labor,  but  as  schoolboys  and  men. 

Not  long  since,  at  a  notable  meeting  of 
capitalists  in  Atlantic  City,  Labor  was  earn- 
estly urged  to  get  together  with  Capital  — 
but  not  at  Atlantic  City.  No  labor  leader 
was  invited  to  get  together  with  the  capi- 
talists there!  And  more  recently,  at  a  still 
more  notable  gathering  in  Washington,  they 
were  brought  together,  —  but  not  in  sym- 
pathy and  understanding,  —  and  they  soon 
separated,  more  hostile,  and  farther  from 
each  other,  than  they  were  before. 
19 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

The  separation  is  educational :  it  began  in 
school;  and,  wide  as  it  now  is,  it  shall  go 
even  wider  with  the  spread  of  vocational 
and  class  education.  Education  and  shoe- 
making  are  not  the  same  thing.  Said  the 
treasurer  of  the  Stetson  Shoe  Company  to 
me:  "We  don't  want  boys  taught  to  make 
shoes  in  school.  We  can  teach  them  better 
here  at  the  factory.  We  want  them  edu- 
cated by  the  schools.  We  need  intelligent 
men,  adaptable  men,  interested  men,  who 
see  that  their  welfare  and  our  welfare  are 
one  welfare."  A  few  hours  in  a  shoe-shop 
(sixteen  hours  in  even  a  printing-shop!)  will 
give  the  green  hand  skill  enough  for  wages, 
doing  for  him  all  that  the  years  of  distract- 
ing vocational  work  in  school  would  do, 
and  do  but  poorly.  Ask  the  manufacturer 
if  it  is  good  business  to  spend  years  for 
hours,  especially  those  precious  school  years 
so  greatly  needed  for  intelligence,  adapta- 
bility, and  that  community  of  interests 
which  sees  in  welfare,  "All  for  each,  and 
each  for  all." 

A  democracy  is  a  whole  people  educated 


PATRONS  OF  DEMOCRACY 

up  to  the  standard  desired  by  the  Stetson 
Shoe  Company.  It  is  a  whole  people  getting 
together;  and  the  closer  together,  the  better 
for  the  democracy.  The  purpose  of  our 
public-school  system  is  to  start  the  whole 
people  together,  and  keep  the  whole  people 
together  for  all  their  young  years,  until  by 
calling  and  election  their  ways  must  part; 
a  parting  not  to  be  allowed  before  the  end  of 
the  high-school  course,  in  order  to  forestall 
the  unequal  ideals  of  the  future,  the  sus- 
picions, jealousies,  and  savage  interests  that 
education  can  prevent,  but  for  which  there 
is  no  cure. 

Such  education  is  not  skill.  It  is  under- 
standing. Let  vocational  guidance  become 
a  part  of  every  high-school  curriculum;  but 
set  up  no  machine  in  the  cellar.  Let  no 
vocational  work  steal  from  the  book  work; 
let  no  trade,  industrial,  business,  no  normal 
or  technical,  school,  divide  the  time  with  the 
high  school.  They  must  follow  the  high 
school. 

The  children  of  the  grades  should  have 
sloyd  and  cooking  and  sewing,   to  give  a 

21 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

necessary  variety  to  their  study,  —  some- 
thing different,  something  for  their  eager 
hands,  —  just  as  they  should  have  play. 
These  occupations  tremendously  add  to  the 
vocabulary,  the  general  understanding  and 
sympathy,  as  well  as  to  a  better-working 
brain;  for  accurate  hands  demand  an  ac- 
curate brain.  But  there  should  be  no  voca- 
tional or  trade  caste  to  this,  if  the  child  is 
normal ;  and  it  should  end  with  the  eighth 
grade,  the  next  four  years,  except  for  the 
deficient,  being  devoted  to  books. 

Technical  and  normal  schools  are  increas- 
ingly necessary;  whereas  trade  schools  — 
schools  to  teach  moulding,  shipbuilding, 
coal-mining,  trawling,-  and  tombstone-cut- 
ting —  are  sheer  nonsense.  What  better 
trade-school  than  the  shop?  What  other 
possible  trade  school  in  the  light  of  all  the 
trades?  According  to  the  Census  of  Manu- 
factures (1914),  Massachusetts  has  393  dif- 
ferent manufacturing  trades.  The  city  of 
Worcester  has  148  different  manufacturing 
trades,  and  teaches,  in  its  expensive  and 
elaborate  trade  schools,  something  like  three 


PATRONS  OF  DEMOCRACY 

of  these!  Is  the  State  to  set  up  393  different 
trade  schools?  Where  are  they  to  be  set  up? 
And  how  are  the  State's  children  to  attend 
them?  The  whole  effort  is  absurd,  and  the 
educational  theory  behind  the  effort  still 
more  absurd.  The  trade  school  can  have 
small  part  and  lot  in  our  public  educational 
scheme.  The  technical  school,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  college  and  should  be  of  college 
grade.  A  high  school  of  commerce  makes 
commerce  the  business  of  babes.  Why  not 
also  a  high  school  of  medicine,  of  theology, 
of  law?  Is  commerce  less  exacting  than  these 
other  callings?  and  are  merchants  so  much 
poorer  mentally  than  other  men,  that  an 
eighth-grade  education  gives  them  intellec- 
tual room  and  verge  enough? 

We  can  build  nothing  for  democracy  on  a 
fourth-grade  foundation;  it  is  of  sand.  In 
exalting  democracy,  the  war  has  magnified 
and  mightily  multiplied  citizenship  over  the 
face  of  the  world,  and  revealed,  not  only  how 
inadequate,  but  how  dangerous,  a  thing  for 
citizenship  a  little  learning  is.  Yet  here  is 
the  average  fourth-grade  man  inheriting  the 
23 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

citizenship  of  the  earth.  The  world  and 
they  that  dwell  therein  have,  of  a  sudden, 
become  democratic  —  become  the  average 
man's  with  his  fourth-grade  education! 
What  will  he  do  with  his  world  —  in  Russia? 
in  America?  Responsibility  has  not  kept 
pace  with  liberty;  education  with  ideality. 
Politically,  socially,  we  have  suffered  a  series 
of  "double  promotions,"  lifted  from  the 
first  grades,  and  set  down  to  problems, 
grades,  and  grades  ahead. 

What  else  means  the  difficulty,  the  un- 
rest, the  suspicion,  the  antagonism  every- 
where, the  revolt  of  the  workers;  the  arming 
of  the  employees,  the  little  wars  in  every 
industry,  so  rapidly  settling  into  the  lines 
of  one  vast  industrial  war,  except  that  we  do 
not  know  how  to  solve  our  social  and  political 
problems?  The  worker,  taken  as  he  runs, 
is  as  intelligent  as  his  employer;  neither  is 
uneducated,  but  both  are  inadequately  or 
wrongly  educated,  with  gaps  and  twists  in 
their  education  that  can  be  made  good  only 
in  a  common  school. 

24 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

There  is  but  one  thing  to  do  —  give  us 
more  education,  which,  in  the  United  States, 
means  an  education  to  the  end  of  the  high 
school  for  every  citizen,  even  though  com- 
pelled by  law;  an  undivided  general  course, 
broadly  human,  broadly  democratic  —  and 
after  that  the  shop,  the  technical  school,  and 

the  college. 

Ill 

More  education  and  a  more  democratic 
education  is  our  great  national  need.  Gov- 
ernments are  not  safe  in  the  hands  of  any 
single  class  —  a  democracy,  of  all  govern- 
ments, the  least  safe.  Heretofore  the  issues 
dividing  us  nationally  have  been  sectional, 
economic,  commercial,  fiscal,  the  political 
cleavage  never  following  social  or  "class" 
lines.  It  is  different  to-day.  The  ugly  word 
"class"  now  thrusts  up  its  long,  low  bulk 
like  a  reef  dead  ahead.    We  must  go  about! 

Education  is  a  class-leveler.  Though  not 
by  any  means  a  cure  for  the  inequalities  of 
life,  education  comes  nearer  than  any  other 
thing  to  being  the  lowest  common  denomina- 
tor of  the  "vulgar  fractions"  of  society  that 
25 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

\vc  call  classes.  American  education,  how- 
ever, is  growing  ever  more  divided.  Instead 
of  leveling  class  distinctions,  our  schools  are 
erecting  them  —  the  vocational  school  its 
class  wall,  the  private  school  its  class  wall, 
shutting  in  between  them  the  common  pub- 
lic school  —  after  the  order  of  the  old  world, 
with  all  its  old-world  antagonisms. 

A  private  school  in  a  democratic  system 
of  education  is  a  sort  of  dress-circle  seat 
in  heaven,  un-American  and  anti-American, 
and  no  substitute  at  all  for  the  common 
public  school.  All  true  forces  of  democracy 
are  centripetal,  getting- together  forces;  for, 
as  Chesterton  puts  it,  "All  real  democracy 
is  an  attempt  (like  that  of  a  jolly  hostess) 
to  bring  the  shy  people  out."  Out  where? 
Out  where  the  self-confident  people  are. 
But  what  private  school  that  I  know  is  jolly 
hostess  to  the  shy  and  timid? 

I  prepared  for  college  at  the  South  Jersey 
Institute,  a  private  school,  at  a  time,  though, 
when  there  was  no  common  high  school  in 
my  town.  A  private  school,  I  say,  but  not  of 
the  "select"  variety,  or  I  should  not  have 
26 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

been  admitted.  A  lad  of  thirteen,  I  rode 
through  the  beautiful  school-grounds  on 
horseback,  as  direct  from  the  farm  as  a  can 
of  morning  milk.  I  had  come  on  the  gallop, 
bareheaded,  barefooted  —  to  my  sudden 
confusion,  when  I  found  those  shoeless  feet 
tagging  me  into  a  book-walled  study  before 
a  great,  kind  man,  who  stood  looking  me 
over  quizzically,  not  critically;  for  he  was 
not  selecting  me,  I  was  selecting  him,  and  it 
pleased  and  puzzled  him. 

For  nearly  five  years  I  went  to  the  Insti- 
tute, which,  with  the  coming  of  the  town 
high  school,  had  no  excuse  for  being,  and 
shortly  ceased  to  be.  In  that  same  city  were 
three  other  excellent  academies,  which  died 
like  the  Institute  and  rose  again  —  in  the 
common  high  school,  transforming  the  spirit, 
and  the  very  body,  of  Bridgeton  with  a  new 
and  a  better  beauty. 

It  has  not  happened  so  in  some  other 
places.  In  the  town  where  I  now  live  the 
old  Academy  is  still  doing  business.  The 
public  high  school  in  this  town  was  opened 
in  1872.  The  Academy,  founded  in  1784, 
27 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

did  well,  and  in  a  public  way,  for  almost  a 
hundred  years,  what  the  high  school  is  now- 
doing.  Yet  the  Academy  lives  on,  a  select 
private  school  now,  a  sort  of  educational 
wedge,  splitting  the  school-children  into  two 
groups,  and  dividing  the  town's  school  inter- 
est and  support. 

The  town's  public  schools  need  undivided 
interest  and  support.  They  are  as  good 
schools  as  they  can  be  under  the  circum- 
stances —  though  evidently  they  lack  some- 
thing which  the  Academy  has,  and  which 
possibly  they  might  have  if  the  Academy 
were  closed.  The  town's  public  schools  are 
not  so  good  as  they  ought  to  be.  And  I  have 
four  sons  to  educate.  These  four  "are  all  I 
have,  and  nothing  but  the  best  is  good  enough 
for  them." 

I  had  hardly  settled  in  Hingham  before 
the  groceryman,  bringing  kerosene  and  cof- 
fee, remarked  as  grocerymen  sometimes  do 
in  Hingham,  — 

"Of  course,  you  '11  send  your  boys  down  to 
the  Academy ;  they  are  nice  and  clean  down 
there." 

28 


I 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

And  a  little  later,  the  town's  first  citizen 
calmed  my  troubled  school-spirit  by  con- 
cluding,— 

"Then,  if  you  don't  like  the  public  schools, 
do  as  the  rest  of  us  do:  send  your  children 
down  to  Derby  Academy." 

This  is  how  * '  the  rest  of  us "  improve  the 
public  schools  in  Hingham;  and  in  Wey- 
mouth next  to  Hingham;  and  in  Braintree 
next  to  Weymouth;  and  in  Quincy  next  to 
Braintree;  and  in  Milton  next  to  Quincy  — 
and  in  Boston. 

The  town  of  Milton  has  just  built  a  mag- 
nificent high  school.  I  pass  it  on  my  way  to 
Boston,  and  I  say,  "Truly  the  Common- 
wealth believes  in  education."  And  then  I 
remember  that  hardly  a  child  of  aristo- 
cratic Milton  attends  that  public  school. 
And  as  for  Milton's  public-school  teachers, 
the  foxes  of  Milton  have  holes,  the  birds 
of  Milton  a  sanctuary  for  their  nests,  but 
the  public-school  teachers  of  Milton  have 
not  within  the  town  where  to  lay  their 
heads. 

A  public-school  teacher,  in  a  New  Eng- 
29 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

land  town  which  he  defined  as  a  "last  refuge 
of  feudalism,"  said  to  me:  "There  was  Wil- 
liam in  the  high  school,  whose  father  had 
been  for  thirty  years  a  coachman  for  one  of 
the  most  exclusive  baronesses  of  the  place. 
She  directed  the  father  to  take  William  out 
of  school  to  work  on  the  estate.  '  Education 
is  not  for  such  persons,'  she  declared.  'He 
should  be  taught  a  trade  and  made  valuable 
to  the  estate.' 

"The  boy  was  an  honor  pupil  and  slated 
for  Harvard  by  his  teachers.  The  Great 
Lady  had  a  boy  too,  just  William's  age,  who 
was  with  the  greatest  difficulty  sticking  to 
the  private-school  rolls  —  only  by  grace  of 
the  head-master  and  tuition  fees.  William's 
father,  with  good  horse  sense  (being  a  coach- 
man), sacrificed  his  job  rather  than  the  boy's 
education. 

"There  was  also  a  well-known  Boston 
banker  who  said  to  me:  'I  would  send  my 
boys  to  your  high  school  if  I  had  the  courage 
to  do  so,  but  the  social  connections  are  too 
valuable  to  sacrifice.' 

"During  the  war  many  great  men  were 
30 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

imported  by  influential  citizens  of  the  town, 
to  arouse  enthusiasm  for  the  war.  They  vis- 
ited the  private  school  —  not  Democracy's 
high  school." 

Still,  Milton,  to  return  to  a  local  habita- 
tion and  a  name,  believes  in  public  schools  — 
for  the  public.  Milton,  itself,  however,  is 
private.  So  is  Hingham.  We  Hingham  folk 
know  that  the  American  public-school  sys- 
tem is  the  best  in  the  world,  and  good 
enough  —  except  for  **my  children."  Now, 
"m>' children!"  Well,  "my  children"  really 
are  extraordinary  —  four  perfect  specimens 
of  the  average  hoy!  They  look  it,  they  act  it 
—  they  actually  seem  to  know  it.  I  helped 
them,  to  be  sure,  but  not  so  much  as  certain 
scions  of  auld  Irish  royalty  down  at  the 
public  school.  They  had  help,  too,  from  a 
bunch  of  stout  descendants  of  the  Vikings; 
and  peculiar  help,  in  outgrowing  their  Little 
Lord  Fauntleroyity,  from  one  who  came  to 
Hingham  High  School  straight  down  the 
Appian  Way.  For  all  the  roads  that  used  to 
lead  to  Rome  now  run  to  Hingham,  and  ter- 
minate in  her  public  schools.  Here  gather 
31 


PATRONS    OF   DEMOCRACY 

most  of  Hingham's  future  citizens,  quite 
un-Americanized  —  young  Cangiano,  Bjork- 
lund,  Weijanc,  Wainakainen,  and  with  them 
four  young  Sharps,  Americanized  by  birth, 
but  not  yet  democratized.  If  these  four 
Sharps  can  do  some  Americanizing,  —  and 
the  pubHc  school  is  the  best,  and  almost  the 
only,  place  to  do  it  in, —  they  can  get  in  turn 
some  wholesome  democratizing  to  balance 
the  account. 

Do  not  the  public  schools  need  my  jour 
boys? 

They    have    been    taught    at    home    the 

"Whole  Duty  of  Children,"  —  to  say  what 

is  true,  to  speak  when  spoken  to,  — 

And  behave  mannerly  at  table: 
At  least  as  far  as  they  are  able. 

They  have  been  taught  a  deal  of  other  things 
besides.  I  doubt  if  many  American  children 
have  had  the  persistent,  faithful,  varied 
training  at  home  that  these  boys  have  had. 
Not  all  their  teachers  together  will  have  put 
in  a  tithe  of  the  time  and  labor  upon  their 
education  that  their  mother  has  spent. 
Before  they  started  to  school  it  began, 
32 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

and  day  by  day,  year  after  year,  it  has 
gone  on  ever  since,  —  in  poetry,  history, 
nature,  science,  politics,  and  religion,  —  con- 
stant, inexorable,  fresh,  mentally  stimulating, 
stirring  to  the  spirit,  and  morally  chasten- 
ing to  a  degree  quite  unheard-of  in  these 
days. 

If  ever  children  were  prepared  to  give 
something,  as  well  as  get  something,  out  of 
their  school,  these  children  were.  And  where 
would  the  little  they  have  to  give  count  for 
so  much  as  here?  And  where  else,  in  turn, 
could  they  receive  so  much?  Certainly  in  a 
school  of  only  their  own  social  kind  they 
could  give  little;  and  what  from  their  own 
kind  could  they  receive?  Even  from  a  selfish 
point  of  view  I  must  do  as  I  am  doing.  And 
this  is  the  point  of  view  of  most  parents: 
with  no  thought  for  what  their  children  can 
give,  but  only  of  what  their  children  are  to 
get  out  of  school  —  out  of  everything!  They 
are  neither  taught,  nor  allowed,  to  give  them- 
selves—  the  gift  supreme,  without  which 
there  is  no  true  giving. 

The  Law^  of  Heaven,  and  of  our  approach 

33 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

to  Heaven,  which  we  call  Democracy,  de- 
mands that  we  love  one  another.  Love 
waits  on  understanding;  understanding  on 
personal  acquaintance;  and  such  acquaint- 
ance waits  nowhere  else  so  naturally,  so 
unreservedly,  so  honestly,  so  generously,  as 
at  the  wide-open  door  of  the  common  school. 
Greater  love  (speaking  democratically)  hath 
no  man  than  this:  that  a  man,  rich  and  cul- 
tured, send  his  son  and  his  little  daughter  to 
his  neighborhood  public  school;  and  if  he  is 
afraid  of  the  school,  that  he  and  his  wife  go 
with  their  children  and  camp  in  that  school, 
and  get  other  fathers  and  mothers  to  camp 
with  them,  until  they  have  made  that  school 
safe  and  fit  for  their  children.  For  verily, 
verily,  I  say  unto  them,  a  school  in  their 
neighborhood  that  is  not  fit  and  safe  for  their 
children,  is  unfit  and  unsafe  for  all  children, 
and  is  a  menace  to  the  neighborhood. 

The  schools  of  Hingham  do  need  my  boys 
as  much  as  my  boys  need  the  schools.  I 
must  not  think  only  of  what  my  children 
get,  any  more  than  I  must  think  only  of 
what  I  am  getting.     Democracy  demands 

34 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

that  we  all  give  largely  of  the  precious  stuff 
that  makes  for  liberty,  equality,  fraternity. 
Silver  and  gold  have  I  little,  but  I  have  four 
wholesome,  intelligent,  clean-minded  boys. 
I  will  give  them.  Besides  my  own  eternal 
debt  to  this  dear  land,  I  happen  to  owe  my 
country  four  good  citizens,  owe  them  to  her 
now,  and  I  will  pay  what  I  owe,  and  pay 
it  now  —  into  the  great  savings-bank  of  de- 
mocracy, the  common  public  school.  What 
else  can  I  do  and  be  an  American? 

I  say  the  Hingham  schools  do  need  my 
boys.  Shall  the  newcomers  from  overseas 
find  only  Shoelenburgs,  Chiofolos,  Koz- 
lofiskis,  Salomaas,  and  twenty  other  nation- 
alities in  high  school,  with  never  a  Sharp  or 
a  Smith  among  them?  Are  these  foreigners 
to  be  the  only  ones  hereafter  to  receive  a 
democratic  education?  the  only  ones  to  fol- 
low the  traditions?  the  only  ones  to  support 
the  institutions  and  live  by  the  principles  of 
our  fathers?  This  is  what  they  have  been 
doing  even  unto  death. 

Here  are  the  names  of  the  New  Eng- 
land boys,  dead  on  the  fields  of  France,  as 

35 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

published  in  the  Boston  "Herald"  —  Janu- 
ary 13,  1919,  the  day  I  was  writing  this:  — 

NEW  ENGLAND  BOYS  ON 

CASUALTY  LIST 

Killed  in  Action 

nUXTOX,  CORP.  VFRXON  C,  Burlington,  Vt. 

KARZo.MAHOVK,  CORR.  MARION,  Ansonia,  Ct. 

SHANSK,  CORP.  .1().SKRII  J.,  Torrington,  Ct. 

LEFRANCOIS,  PRiV.  ROWELL  J.,  Turlant,  Vt. 

MEDEIROS,  PRiV.  JOHN  P.,  New  Bedford. 

MIKENEZONIS,  PRIV.  STANLEY,  Bridgeport, 
Ct. 

MOSCHELIO,  PRIV.  SALVATORE,  44  Dunstable 
Street,  Charlestown. 

MURAD,  PRIV.  JOHN  S.,  Portland.  Me. 

Not  many  Sharps  and  Smiths  among  these 
eight.  Dear,  gallant  souls!  how  well  they 
learned  and  lived  their  democracy! 

My  own  four  were  too  young  to  go,  but 
they  would  have  gone  —  to  fight,  to  die,  had 
the  war  lasted  longer.  //  my  four  boys  could 
fight  for  democracy  in  France,  they  can  go 
to  school  for  democracy  in  the  United  States! 
Good  average  boys  my  four  are,  just  the 
kind  to  grow  into  democratic  citizens,  and 
to  go  to  school  with  those  little  foreign  Amer- 
icans, like  Karzomaroyk,  Lefrangois,  and 
Mikenezonis  —  killed  in  action  in  January! 

And  my  boys  are  just  the  sort  to  help  make 
Hingham's  public  schools  what  they  ought 
36 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

to  be.  Hingham's  public  schools  are  far  from 
what  they  ought  to  be,  because  four  Sharps 
and  a  Smith  or  two  are  not  enough.  All  the 
boys  and  girls  of  Hingham  are  necessary  to 
make  Hingham's  public  schools  what  they 
ought  to  be  —  and  to  make  this  democracy 
what  it  ought  to  be;  or  even  to  keep  it 
what  it  has  been. 

But  instead  of  all  going  to  Hingham's 
public  schools,  Hingham's  few  boys  are  scat- 
tered between  the  public  schools  and  Derby 
Academy,  Thayer  Academy,  Milton  Acad- 
emy, Dummer  Academy,  Andover  Academy 
—  boys  who  ought  to  be  with  my  boys  in 
Hingham's  common  school;  boys  whom  my 
boys  will  never  know,  not  even  when  they 
meet  later  in  Hingham's  town  meeting. 
Yet  Hingham  is  not  so  bad  as  its  neighbor 
town  of  Hanover. 

Hingham  and  Hanover  are  symptomatic 
of  New  England,  as  New  England  is  symp- 
tomatic of  the  Eastern  States  generally.  In 
the  way  of  schools  the  state  of  New  York 
is  perhaps  the  least  democratic  community 
in  the  country,  having  practically  no  com- 

37 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

mon  school.  The  rich,  and  even  the  well- 
to-do,  of  New  York  patronize  only  the 
private  school.  Let  the  Japanese  visitors 
go  down  South,  and  they  shall  find  another 
segregation  —  of  white  and  black  children  in 
the  schools,  both  being  educated  for  life  and 
a  living,  but  neither  for  living  together,  for 
democracy.  And  yet  the  South's  treatment 
of  the  negro  is  more  consistent,  and,  on  the 
whole,  more  democratic,  than  New  England's. 
Boston  gives  the  negro  the  best  of  edu- 
cations and  the  meanest  of  chances  to  live. 

There  are  tremendous  difficulties  —  most 
of  them  white  difficulties  —  in  this  black 
question.  I  was  brought  up  in  Southern 
New  Jersey  with  the  negro;  I  have  lived 
and  worked  in  Georgia  with  him;  I  have 
studied  him  in  Boston,  at  one  time  knowing 
personally  almost  every  colored  man  in  the 
city,  and  I  know  that  he  is  not  an  undesirable 
citizen,  that  we  need  him  and  we  should 
make  him  feel  it,  by  giving  him  what  he 
asks  —  simple  justice:  the  education,  the 
chance  to  work,  to  vote,  to  live,  to  be  a  man, 
that  we  demand  for  ourselves.  Racially 
38 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

there  should  be  no  mingling  —  for  racial  in- 
terests; and  in  the  South,  where  for  genera- 
tions yet  they  will  live  in  segregated  districts, 
they  should  have  their  own  churches  and 
their  own  neighborhood  schools,  but  schools 
with  the  same  course  of  study  as  the  white 
schools;  a  course  of  study  in  both  schools 
that  shall  make  for  mutual  understanding, 
for  mutual  respect  and  tolerance,  and  for 
all  that  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness 
can  mean  in  America,  north  or  south  of  the 
Mason  &  Dixon  line. 

It  is  neither  north  nor  south,  but  west  of 
this  line,  that  our  oriental  visitors  shall  come 
nearest  to  finding  what  American  public- 
school  education  means.  It  is  in  the  Middle 
West  that  they  shall  come  closest  to  their 
quest.  The  best  public  schools  in  the  United 
States  are  the  schools  of  the  Middle  West. 
The  people  of  the  West  believe  in  their 
schools,  they  spend  without  stint  for  them, 
and,  to  a  degree  most  shocking  to  the  ex- 
clusive East  and  South,  they  attend  them. 
Their  faith  in  public-school  education  was 
incorporated  in  the  Act  of  1787,  setting 
39 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

aside  the  Northwest  Territory;  wherein  was 
a  provision  forever  prohibiting  slavery  in  all 
that  territory  and  forever  encouraging  edu- 
cation. There  are  private  schools  in  the 
West  —  in  Chicago;  and  there  are  sure  to  be 
more  as  wealth  increases  and  social  privi- 
leges multiply;  but  the  present  generation  of 
the  West  got  its  education  in  the  public 
schools;  and  it  is  the  system  of  education 
in  the  West,  and  the  spirit  of  education  in 
the  West,  that  these  visiting  educators  will 
carry  back  with  them  for  adoption  in  Japan. 

IV 

Under  the  Constitution,  North  and  South, 
East  and  West  share  alike  certain  great 
obligations  which,  taken  together,  are  democ- 
racy, the  preparation  for  which  can  begin 
only  in  a  common  education.  However  dif- 
ferent the  social  conditions  into  which  we  are 
born;  however  far  diverging,  through  in- 
heritance and  personal  efTort,  our  individual 
paths,  there  is  a  common  national  inheri- 
tance into  which  we  are  all  bom,  a  body  of 
common  knowledge  which  we  must  all  learn, 
40 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

a  code  of  common  principles  which  we  must 
all  follow,  a  load  of  common  tasks  which 
we  must  all  shoulder,  and  a  faith  of  com- 
mon ideals  to  which  we  must  all  subscribe. 
These  things  in  common  demand  a  common 
experience  and  a  common  training,  both  of 
which  are  impossible  once  childhood  has 
passed.  A  pure  democracy  does  not  exist, 
not  yet,  anyway;  and  if  such  an  ideal  state, 
by  the  nature  of  things,  cannot  exist,  its  bed- 
rock exists,  broadly,  firmly  laid  in  the  heart 
of  youth  and  in  our  American  public  schools. 
There  is  no  other  school  American  enough 
for  my  children.  There  are  good  private 
schools;  there  are  poor  public  schools;  but 
the  one  indispensable  lesson  for  my  child 
to  learn  is  the  lesson  of  American  democ- 
racy—  "that  each  one's  duty,"  as  James 
Bryce  puts  it  for  us,  "is  not  only  to  accept 
equality,  but  also  to  relish  equality  and  to 
make  himself  pleasant  to  his  equals."  The 
best  private  school  that  fails  to  teach  this 
lesson  is  a  poorer  school  for  America  than 
the  poorest  public  school  that  does  teach  it. 
It  is  not  impossible  for  a  private  school  to 
41 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

teach  democracy;  not  impossible  for  it  to  be 
a  democracy  —  or  for  a  rich  man  to  go  to 
heaven. 

What  democracy  is,  and  what  it  is  to  be 
democratic  —  these  are  the  first  things  to 
learn  in  school;  besides  them  are  other  great 
things:  to  know  the  world  of  books,  and  be 
a  citizen  there;  the  world  of  nature,  and  be 
a  citizen  there;  the  world  of  art,  and  be  a 
citizen  there;  the  world  of  science,  and  be 
a  citizen  there;  the  world  of  reHgion,  and 
be  a  citizen  there.  The  world  of  men,  how- 
ever, laboring  men,  professional  men,  busi- 
ness men.  Northern,  Southern,  Western  men, 
Hingham  men:  to  know  these  men,  yourself 
as  one  of  them,  that  they  are  America,  is  to 
be  pretty  safely  educated  for  democracy  — 
an  education  provided  against  by  the  very 
nature  of  the  private  school. 

Says  John  Galsworthy:  — 

In  my  day  at  a  public  school  [a  "public" 
school  in  England  is  a  private  school  here]  .  .  . 
the  universe  was  divided  into  ourselves  and  "out- 
siders," "bounders,"  "chaws,"  "cads,"  or  what- 
ever more  or  less  offensive  name  seemed  best  to 
42 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

us  to  characterize  those  less  fortunate  than  our- 
selves. .  .  .  The  workingman  did  not  exist  for 
us,  except  as  a  person  outside,  remote  and  al- 
most inimical.  From  our  homes,  touched  already 
by  this  class  feeling  ...  we  went  to  private 
schools  where  the  teaching  of  manners,  mainly 
under  clerical  supervision,  effectually  barred  us 
from  any  contaminating  influence,  so  that  if  by 
chance  we  encountered  the  "lower-class"  boy 
we  burned  to  go  for  him  and  correct  his  "cheek." 
Thence  we  passed  into  the  great  "Caste"  fac- 
tory, a  public  [our  private]  school  where  the  feel- 
ing becomes,  by  the  mere  process  of  being  left  to 
itself,  as  set  as  iron.  .  .  .  All  learned  to  con- 
sider themselves  the  elect.  ...  In  result,  failing 
definite,  sustained  effort  to  break  up  a  narrow 
"caste"  feeling,  the  public  [private]  school  pre- 
sents a  practically  solid  phalanx  of  the  fortunate, 
insulated  against  real  knowledge  of,  or  real 
sympathy  with,  the  less  fortunate.  The  phalanx 
marches  out  into  the  professions,  into  business 
into  the  universities,  where,  it  is  true,  some 
awaken  to  a  sense  of  wider  values  —  but  none  too 
many.  From  the  point  of  view  of  anyone  who 
tries  to  see  things  as  they  are,  and  see  them  as 
a  whole,  there  is  something  terrific  about  this 

43 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

automatic  "caste"  moulding  of  the  young.  And 
in  the  present  condition  of  our  country  it  is  folly, 
and  dangerous  folly,  to  blink  it. 

It  is  folly,  and  dangerous  folly,  to  blink 
such  a  system  of  education  anywhere.  It 
is  worse  than  folly  to  tolerate  it  in  America. 

If  there  is  a  compensation,  or  an  equiva- 
lent, for  democracy,  have  the  American 
private  schools  a  patent  on  it?  What  can  the 
private  school  do,  because  it  is  private,  that 
the  public  school  cannot  do?  Surely  nothing 
which  money  can  buy,  for  the  public  has  the 
money.  And  it  must  spend  it,  until  it  puts 
every  private  school  out  of  business.  As  for 
scholarship  and  deportment,  the  private 
school  can  hardly  maintain  the  average 
standard  of  the  public  school,  for  private 
schools  are  notoriously  sensitive  to  student 
fees.  Did  I  say  "standards"?  Standardiza- 
tion is  exactly  what  the  private  school  avoids. 
Superior  individual  training  is  its  strong 
claim ;  a  claim  which  might  have  some  force 
were  schools  not  machines,  and  were  this 
not  a  democracy  where  no  man  but  the 
handicapped  needs  an  attendant. 

44 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

Democracy  or  no,  a  vast  number  of  ambi- 
tious Americans,  with  and  without  money, 
distrust  the  common  schools,  because  they 
are  common,  systematized,  standardized  — 
as  if  they  were  therefore  without  chance 
for  experiment,  or  for  individual  initiative, 
bent,  or  "manifest  destiny."  President 
Lowell  of  Harvard  is  afraid  of  the  medio- 
crity of  the  public  schools.  I  should  like  to 
call  to  his  attention  the  picture  of  the  prize- 
winning  students  of  a  famous  "prep"  school, 
quoted  earlier  in  this  book,  and  also  beg  him 
to  study  the  statistics  compiled  by  the 
Department  of  Education  at  Harvard,  which 
"show  that  a  higher  degree  of  scholarship  is 
reached  by  graduates  of  high  schools  at  that 
college  than  by  preparatory  schools  boys," 
and  that,  "this  fact  is  present  in  every  de- 
partment of  the  college." 

Public  or  private,  a  school  is  only  a  school, 
a  machine;  and  the  better  school  it  is,  the 
better  machine  it  is,  and  the  more  machine- 
like is  its  product.  The  education  for  indi- 
viduality can  be  had  in  no  school:  such  ed- 
ucation must  come  primarily  from  other 
45 


PATRONS    OF   DEMOCRACY 

sources  —  from  the  home  first  of  all,  from 
books  and  friends  and  nature;  but.  take  it 
by  and  large,  the  individual,  even  as  an 
individual,  stands  the  best  chance  where  he 
stands  most  nearly  upon  his  own  feet,  with 
no  helps  but  self-helps,  and  where  he  counts 
for  what  he  is,  not  for  what  his  parents  are, 
or  what  they  lay  upon  him. 

"The  fallacy  underlying"  my  suggestion 
that  we  all  attend  a  common  school,  writes 
the  head-master  of  the  Canterbury  School 
(private.  New  Milford.  Connecticut),  is 
"that  this  method  would  be  preoccupied 
with  establishing  a  merely  external  uni- 
formity; for  it  would  be  vain  to  hope  that 
you  could  make  all  Young  America  remain 
at  the  same  level  of  thought  and  emotion  in 
regard,  not  to  their  country  alone,  but  to  the 
world  in  which  they  live." 

It  certainly  would  be  vain  and  as  unde- 
sirable as  vain.  Who  could  dream  of  such 
a  level,  knowing  the  variety  of  human  na- 
ture even  among  the  children  of  the  same 
parents! 

"Many  of  us,"  he  goes  on,  "believe  that 
46 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

there  is  no  contradiction  between  the  acqui- 
sition of  culture  and  the  preserv^ation  of  true 
democracy";  as  if  culture  were  exclusively  a 
thing  of  the  private  school!  And  as  if  most 
Americans  did  believe  that  true  democracy 
calls  for  movies,  garlic,  and  bad  manners! 
This  will  do  to  tell  to  the  marines,  and  to 
publish  in  the  columns  of  the  New  York 
"Tribune"  (where  it  appeared  as  a  letter  of 
protest) ;  but  tell  it  not  in  Gath,  nor  publish 
it  in  the  streets  of  Askalon,  lest  the  daughters 
of  the  Philistines  rejoice! 

The  complacency  of  this  esteem  is  eclipsed 
only  by  the  foolishness  and  the  deep  danger 
at  the  bottom  of  the  shallow  argument:  "It 
takes  all  kinds  of  men  to  make  up  the  world. 
Perhaps  we  are  not  wrong  in  concluding,  in 
view  of  the  past  history  of  our  country,  that 
it  takes  all  kinds  of  education  to  develop 
true  democracy." 

Who  says  it  takes  all  kinds  of  men  to 
make  up  the  world,  and  all  kinds  of  educa- 
tion to  develop  a  true  democracy?  It  takes 
only  democratic  education  to  develop  true 
democracy.  Nor  does  it  take  all  kinds  of 
47 


PATRONS    OF   DEMOCRACY 

education  to  destroy  true  democracy:  pri- 
vate school,  trade  school  —  class  education 
is  enough  to  destroy  democracy  —  as  it  is 
threatening  to  do. 

Democracy  is  a  difficult  thing  to  develop, 
to  live  up  to  or  down  to.  Says  the  London 
' '  Weekly  Times ' '  of  October  31,  1 9 1 9 :  — 

There  are  thorns  in  the  path  of  consistent 
democracy  and  a  few  of  them  have  penetrated 
the  feet  of  a  Cabinet  Minister.  Dr.  Addison 
saw  no  reason  why  his  daughters  should  not  be 
educated  at  the  Middlesex  County  Secondary 
School  for  Girls.  He  considered  it  a  good  school. 
It  was  convenient  to  his  home.  "  He  has  as  much 
right "  —  the  words  are  his  own  —  "as  any  other 
citizen  to  send  his  children  to  a  public  second- 
ary school."  Yet  members  of  the  local  Educa- 
tion Committee  complain,  their  view  being  that 
people  who  can  afford  more  expensive  schools 
should  not  take  advantage  of  cheap  ones,  which 
ought  to  be  left  for  "ordinary  people."  Dr. 
Addison  has  thought  fit  to  issue  a  defensive 
statement,  and  ordinary  people  are  smiling  — 
but  more  at  the  Education  Committee  than  at 
Dr.  Addison.  Nevertheless,  this  absurd  case 
has  numerous  precedents  and  corollaries,  arising 
48 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

from  our  British  exaggeration  of  class  divisions. 
A  rich  man,  for  instance,  is  not  respected  for 
riding  on  a  tramway  car,  though  for  some  recon- 
dite illogical  reason  his  presence  in  an  omni- 
bus is  condoned.  When  Dr.  Addison  has  learnt 
that  the  democracy  likes  a  Cabinet  Minister 
earning  £5000  a  year  to  "keep  his  place,"  he  will 
refrain  from  educating  his  children  so  well.  His 
sole  care  will  be  to  educate  them  expensively. 

Let  the  private  school  act  as  an  asylum 
for  the  over-sensitive,  the  timid,  the  back- 
ward   and    stubborn,    a    function    already 
recognized  in  some   quarters  as  peculiarly 
its  own.      One  of  my  friends,  entering  her 
son  at  a  New  Hampshire  public  school,  was 
asked  by  the  superintendent, — 
"Where  has  he  been  to  school?  " 
"In  a  private  school  near  Boston." 
"Then    we    can't    take    him,"    was    the 
astonishing  reply.     "We  have  no  private 
school  in  this  district,  no  provision  of  any 
kind  for  the  abnormal." 

The  other  day  I  stood  looking  across  the 
street  into  the  windows  of  a  private  school, 
windows  literally  darkened  by  the  shadow  of 

49 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

a  great  public-school  building.  This  private 
school  had  been  an  old  dwelling-house,  one 
of  a  solid  block  of  houses  that  it  had  appro- 
priated much  as  a  hermit  crab  appropriates 
an  abandoned  mollusk's  shell,  the  school 
accomodating  itself  to  the  house,  not  the 
house  to  the  school.  A  single  window  to  a 
floor  let  in  the  shadows  of  the  street.  The 
select  children  were  in  the  study  room;  and 
as  I  looked,  I  chanced  to  see  one  of  them 
seize  what  appeared  to  be  her  geography, 
and  bring  it  down  with  a  vicious  smash  upon 
the  dear  devoted  head  of  her  select  sister. 
It  was  only  the  exceptional  act,  of  course, 
which  proves  the  abiding  rule  of  good  man- 
ners in  private  schools;  but  I  could  only 
think  how  human  and  hopeful  private-school 
children  are,  and  how  like  public-school 
children,  really;  and  what  a  pity  to  mew  up 
these  few  select  girls  in  this  dark,  inade- 
quate, abandoned  house  of  gentry,  when 
they  might  have  spent  the  afternoon  across 
the  street  with  a  thousand  little  unselected 
brothers  and  sisters,  in  the  spacious  halls  of 
the  great  public  school,  —  as  I  was  spend- 
50 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

ing  my  afternoon,  it  being  the  day  before 
Christmas,  —  marching  down  the  long  ring- 
ing corridors  to  the  tune  of  "Over  There," 
for  an  hour  of  Christmas  singing  and  story- 
telling in  the  sunny  assembly-room;  and 
marching  back  singing,  "Keep  the  Home 
Fires  Burning,"  every  right  hand  at  salute 
as  the  thousand  little  singers  passed  out 
between  the  Colors  flanking  the  assembly- 
room  door. 

Money  can  get  culture  for  the  public 
schools;  there  is  no  patent  on  culture.  All 
the  factors  of  culture  —  buildings,  pictures, 
books,  music,  and  refined  teachers  —  shall 
be  had,  and  shall  be  had  for  all  public  schools, 
just  as  soon  as  the  public  recognizes  educa- 
tion as  strictly  social,  fitting  us  to  live  to- 
gether. The  Three  R's  will  be  the  beginning 
of  this  education,  and  democracy  the  bigger 
end  toward  which  it  moves.  The  Three 
R's  broadly  handled,  strongly,  stirringly 
taught,  and  carried  on  until  they  compass 
the  doctrine  of  democracy,  shall  be  the  com- 
mon education  of  the  future. 

Give  me  the  literature  of  the  world,  give 
51 


PATRONS   OF   DEMOCRACY 

me  the  power  of  expression,  give  me  the 
magic  of  mathematics,  and  besides  these, 
give  me  the  idea  of  democracy,  as  a  moral 
code,  as  a  social  order,  as  a  reHgious  faith, 
and  you  have  given  me,  not  only  wisdom 
and  power,  but  an  eye  for  the  wind  when  I 
cart  ashes  for  the  city,  and  a  sympathy  for 
the  flustered  caretakers  of  the  Belgian  suite 
when  I  am  entertained  in  Buckingham  Pal- 
ace. Before  President  Wilson's  visit  only 
royalty  had  occupied  the  Belgian  suite,  and 
the  aged  attendants  were  troubled  over  the 
proper  etiquette.  You  can  imagine  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Wilson,  out  of  the  abundance  and 
gentleness  of  their  democracy,  saying,  "Oh, 
don't  make  any  fuss  over  us.  Treat  us  just 
as  you  do  your  other  guests.  Whatever 
is  good  enough  for  royalty  is  good  enough 
for  us." 

It  is  the  unabashed,  complaisant  Ameri- 
can "mediocrity,"  the  lack  of  money  and 
manners,  that  Hingham  and  Boston  and 
New  York  draw  back  from  in  the  public 
schools  —  the  unwashed  American,  in  the 
language  of  my  groceryman.  It  is  this  and 
52 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

more:  it  is  really  American  democracy  itself 
which  our  people  dislike.  It  is  from  America 
herself,  her  best  self,  that  we  withdraw  — 
to  set  up  about  us  our  little  neighborhood 
aristocracies. 

The  wise  men  from  the  East,  except  out 
of  curiosity,  perhaps,  will  not  enter  a  private 
school  in  the  United  States,  having  learned 
in  Japan  how  an  aristocracy  is  created; 
what  they  have  come  seeking  is  the  source 
and  the  secret  of  democracy;  and  they  are 
right  in  coming  to  the  public  schools. 

But  suppose  they  come  to  Boston,  to  the 
only  public  school  in  the  Back  Bay?  Oh, 
here  is  the  secret  for  which  they  are  seeking. 
They  have  followed  the  gleam,  and  it  has 
led  them  to  this  school  for  rich  and  poor  — 
if  there  are  any  poor  in  the  Back  Bay! 
Here  shall  be  found  the  little  citizens  of  the 
future,  eleven  hundred  of  them  from  the 
water-side  of  Beacon  Street,  over,  far  over 
from  "between  the  tracks";  little  seeds  in 
the  cold-frame  of  democracy,  seatmates, 
classmates,  playmates  together  in  the  na- 
tion's Common  School ! 
53 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

Common  School!  the  nation  has  public 
schools,  and  private  schools,  but  no  com- 
mon school.  The  Oriental  visitors,  who  are 
used  to  a  mild  form  of  aristocracy  in  tiieir 
own  Japan,  will  stare  with  astonishment  at 
the  eleven  hundred  children  in  this  Back 
Bay  public  school  ivho  are  none  oj  them  Back 
Bay  children.  True,  there  are  children  from 
the  Back  Bay  here,  —  cooks'  children,  coach- 
men's children,  from  over  on  Beacon  Street, 
—  while  the  rest  are  a  floating  riff-raff  from 
somewhere  west  of  Boylston  Street,  between 
the  railroad  tracks. 

Back  Bay  children  used  to  attend  this 
public  school,  and  a  few  may  still  attend. 
When  it  was  made  thoroughly  democratic, 
however,  the  Back  Bay  withdrew  its  children, 
en  bloc;  but  not  its  patronage.  Back  Bay 
women,  believing  in  education  and  culture, 
have  privately  supplied  this  school  with 
their  money,  ever  since  they  deprived  it  of 
their  children  —  money  for  drawing,  dancing, 
singing,  and  a  school  visitor.  And  all  these 
things  money  can  buy;  but  the  thing  that 
money   cannot    buy    is   democracy.      Only 

54 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

Back  Bay  children  can  supply  the  Back  Bay 
school  with  democracy,  and  Back  Bay  child- 
ren are  not  allowed  to  go  to  this  Back  Bay 
school.  Eleven  hundred  children  in  the  only 
Back  Bay  public  school,  and  scarcely  a  Back 
Bay  child  among  them ! 

As  a  nation,  we  understand  the  theory  of 
democracy;  collectively,  we  are  eloquent 
preachers  of  the  doctrine;  but  as  individuals, 
we  practise  a  different  thing.  We  can  die 
for  democracy.  Yet  we  cannot  go  to  school 
for  it;  we  cannot  be  democratic.  We  are 
sending  democratic  literature  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth.  Our  Fourteen  Peace  Points 
were  translated  into  three  hundred  native 
languages  of  India,  whose  millions  of  poor 
for  the  first  time  had  the  gospel  of  democ- 
racy preached  to  them.  The  isles  of  the 
sea  heard,  and  the  Japanese  came  seeking 
the  truth  of  democracy  —  in  the  only  public 
school  of  the  Back  Bay  of  Boston! 

"We  will  drop  things  German,  and  take 
things  American,"  they  say.  But  what  do 
they  find  America  doing?  Dropping  things 
American  and  adopting  things  German  — 

55 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

the  vocational  in  place  of  the  liberal  school, 
the  private  and  the  parochial  in  place  of 
the  common  school.  They  find  America 
fighting  to  make  the  world  safe  for  democ- 
racy, and  arraying  her  own  citizens  in  war- 
ring camps  of  class  and  mass  by  a  system  of 
"education  for  a  living,"  and  by  another 
system  of  "education  for  life,"  for  place, 
and  power,  instead  of  for  liberty,  equality, 
fraternity,  which  is  just  the  opposite  of  what 
Germany  to-day  is  doing.  Does  God  laugh? 
He  must  laugh,  else  despair  of  the  human 
race  would  kill  Him.  Here  are  the  German 
people  with  their  new  republican  constitu- 
tion abolishing  all  private  schools,  both  ele- 
mentary and  preparatory;  sweeping  off  the 
stage,  along  with  titles  of  honor,  class  privi- 
lege, the  Iron  Cross,  and  all  other  accoutre- 
ments of  the  "old  imperialism,"  the  thou- 
sands of  private  educational  establishments 
which  flourished  throughout  the  fatherland 
before  the  war.  "That  the  German  people, 
with  their  intense  faith  in  the  power  of 
education,  should  have  done  this  is  a  signi- 
ficant sign  of  the  times"  —  in  Germany! 
56 


PATRONS   OF  DEMOCRACY 

But  in  America?  I  have  four  sons  to  edu- 
cate in  America  —  one  a  politician,  I  hope; 
one  a  preacher;  one  a  poet;  one  a  combined 
farmer  and  a  college  professor,  may  be!  I 
am  ambitious  for  them.  But  professor,  or 
poet,  or  preacher,  or  politician,  —  I  care  not 
what,  —  one  thing  they  shall  be,  if  the  public 
schools  can  make  them :  they  shall  be  demo- 
cratic citizens  of  this  great  democracy, 
taught  to  accept  equality,  taught  to  relish 
equality,  and  taught  to  make  themselves 
pleasant  to  their  equals. 


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